Last.fm is undergoing a major redesign in a bid to make it more social and
"mainstream".

Matthew Hawn, Last.fm’s vice president of product, has hired eight new UK-based developers to lead the site’s facelift, and help transform it into a “mainstream music service”.

“I have just hired eight new people to really begin work on redesigning the site and making the bits of the service which really matter come to the surface,” Hawn told The Telegraph.

He admitted that his biggest concern was that the music site, once the UK’s most talked about digital music start-up, had lost its place in people’s minds and become too niche.

“Last.fm was initially designed by three guys in Hoxton [east London] and they created it for who they were and types of people they mixed with. We now need to focus on making the service more mainstream and plugged into people’s other music experiences and social networks,” he explained.

The site, which controversially stopped offering on-demand streaming last year in an attempt to scale back high licensing costs, was bought by CBS for £140 million in 2007, is now solely focused on providing personalised internet radio, music recommendation and ‘scrobbling’.

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Scrobbling allows Last.fm users to track what they listen to both on the Last.fm site and in other players, such as iTunes. When a track is 'scrobbled’ to the Last.fm servers, it forms part of a user’s personal listening charts and enables Last.fm to recommend new music. The recommendation engine drives Last.fm’s streaming radio.

Hawn and his team are initially focusing on making the site more social. As of last week, users can sign into Last.fm using their Facebook account – so they can share songs on the social network and can find friends with greater ease on the music site, using Facebook’s social graph.

By the end of this month Last.fm is going to add a ‘friend finder’ tool, which will allow people to find friends who are on the site they have not yet connected to.

Hawn said the site is going to re-start running more live music events in the UK. Since being purchased by US giant CBS, the site’s grown in popularity in the US and waned in the UK. Hawn wants to put the service back onto people’s agendas through a series of live gigs and events.

The site attracts around 30 million unique visitors a month, but does not break out UK-only figures. It makes the majority of its money through display advertising and a smaller amount from subscriptions – which offer mobile access and advert-free music. Hawn said the monthly £3 subscriptions are growing slowly – but would not divulge figures or the UK-only position.

The site is also working with several major entertainment brands – the first one being MTV - who are using the Last.fm API. The music TV company is creating a special Last.fm player on its site, which will allow Last.fm users to login into the player using their Last.fm IDs, and be played tracks based on their listening habits.

Hawn said as the site approaches its 10th birthday next year, he wants it to become “a strong music destination which stores people’s entire music history online”.

He explained: “I know we have a lot of work to do, but we want to become the connective tissue between music services like Spotify and iTunes…and the place where people publish their music taste online. If Foursquare is where you publish your location, and Facebook is where you socially connect, Last.fm should be where you publish your taste in music.”